Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

Last week José smiled. On a fairly regular basis. When he wasn’t frowning, that is.
And, he sat downstage right or left most of the time we were at the rug, rather than practically out the door and with his back to me.
I considered all this enormous progress and worked hard to acknowledge [...]

The first month of school is a crucial time in the life of a classroom. Don’t meld them into a working group, and you pay for it for the rest of the year. Classroom life is chaos. Teaching and learning are repeatedly interrupted by stretches of wildness. Days are exhausting. [...]

The force is always with us in the classroom. We, the teachers, direct, control, command. The question is always how much force to use.
I’m not talking about physical force–though did you know that in the eighth year of the 21st century corporal punishment in schools is still legal in 22 U.S. states?!
I’m talking [...]

How do you feel about lines? Most adults, I think, HATE them, unless we’re already in one, and someone cuts into it. Then we want the orderly justice a line promises, be it on the freeway or at Costco. Our inner wild thing wants to become a ruthless enforcer of line order.
Wild kid [...]

It’s the weekend. The Wild Things are roaring their terrible roars at home and not in my ears. In the silence I find myself thinking about José.
José who’s always playing with his erasers. Who sits as far away from me as possible. Who likes to be last in line and alone [...]

We all deal with it. Some more than others. All day I tried to find ways to teach physically. We were pirates (tomorrow being International Talk Like a Pirate Day). We were long vowels standing tall and short ones crouching down. We used unifix cubes all through math.

8 kids mostly [...]

We’re such creatures of habit. What worked before is what we gravitate towards, instinctually, it seems. Why does it take so much effort to approach things anew? And when are we willing to try?
My kids from the last two years were abstract thinkers. They loved symbolic manipulation. For most of them, [...]

There’s something about a new beginning in September that’s embedded in our life’s rhythm no matter how far we are from school. New season. New wardrobe. A new fall line-up.
A scrubbed and purposeful self ready to begin crisp new things.
Parents and teachers. We feel it more acutely. We live by [...]